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After the NATO Summit last week, many people around the world recognized that there is a city called Ankara in Türkiye, and it is a prominent one.
In 2004, Türkiye hosted the NATO summit in Istanbul, the former Roman and Ottoman capital, where leaders met in magnificent palaces. Last week, the leaders of NATO convened in Ankara’s grand presidential palace, “Kulliye,” built in the 2010s by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The NATO Summit was not limited to Kulliye’s novel architectural design, which ties modernism to the Seljuk architecture of 800 years ago.
While the leaders were at the Presidential Palace, the think tank community gathered at Ankara Palas, a gem of early-republican architecture dating back to the 1920s.
The defense industry forum was held at Congressium, which does not really have a national architectural reference but is a neutral modern convention and exhibition center like many of those built in the 2000s in China.
Indeed, Ankara has a lot to see and experience. Unbeknownst to many, it is the fifth-largest city in Europe, after Istanbul, London, Moscow, and Paris (definition of Europe: Member countries of the European Council).
Ankara may be better known as Türkiye’s administrative capital, but it is increasingly positioned to become one of the country’s main engines of technology-led growth. Ankara has become the brain of Türkiye’s defense ecosystem.
While Türkiye’s average export value remains around $1.57 per kilogram, defense and aerospace exports exceed $65 per kilogram. The Turkish Technological Development Index ranks the city first.
Türkiye is also a global construction giant; Turkish firms rank second in number, after China, on the world’s top 250 contractor companies list published by Engineering News-Record. Most of those companies are also headquartered in Ankara.
For many, Ankara is a more livable city than Istanbul. It is an excellent secondary city like Lyon or Valencia, with easy and low-cost access to cultural venues and social spaces.
Yet, Ankara did not receive the care it deserved for decades. Türkiye’s development has always been Istanbul-centric.
Ankara embodies a structural contradiction in Türkiye’s development model: the country has concentrated sovereign capacity in its capital, while concentrating global connectivity in Istanbul. Many government policies enforced this awkward imbalance. I will give two examples:
First, there are very few direct international flights to and from Ankara. I moved to Istanbul from Ankara ten years ago, and to be honest, a primary reason was avoiding the last leg of international flights from Istanbul to Ankara.
Imagine that at least once every month, all your colleagues go home and sleep, and you still have three more hours to spend at the airport lounge and on the flight.
Ankara still does not have a direct flight to London Heathrow. Direct flights to Paris or Dubai are available on limited days of the week. Ajet, a subsidiary of state-owned Turkish Airlines, has been instituting direct international flights recently, but for some reason, they are generally to regional hubs such as Sarajevo, Bucharest, or Tbilisi.
The second example is the Michelin guides, which have been covering Türkiye’s restaurant scene since 2023.
Financed by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Michelin guides cover Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum, and Cappadocia. No Ankara. Not that Ankara does not have delicacies—I have seen many gourmet guides even for the NATO summit.
This is a result of a shameful prejudice that prevents a ministry of culture from getting the city it is based in included in the world’s top restaurant guide.
Ankara’s underrated status is an unfortunate design choice. The capital city’s connectivity does not match its level of economic and cultural development and hence is not sustainable.
Ankara does not need to remain secondary to Istanbul. It needs to become a capital that the world can reach directly, not necessarily asking Istanbul for permission. Perhaps the NATO Summit will be a step in this direction.
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